Appreciative Enquiry

As part of our job as facilitators in residence (FIR’s) Joan Wilmot and I offered a session on Appreciative Inquiry (AI) on the Monday morning matinee slot. 

Appreciative Inquiry came out of America in the 90’s.  Essentially it is a way of looking, seeing what is working rather than what is not. Another way of putting it is seeing life as a mystery to be embraced rather than only a problem to be solved.  Deceptively simple in its approach and philosophy, the idea behind it is that action follows thought.  If we fill our minds with negative images, we act on our images, and if we see the world in a more positive way we move in a different direction. So, for example, a goal of reducing vandalism in a school will lead to images of graffiti, broken glass and such like, with a possible remedy of CCTV.  An image of creating a beautiful school environment would in itself reduce the vandalism but in a much more positive and creative way.  

Joan and Robin Explaining AI

Central to the approach is that any lasting change has to be owned by all levels of the organisation, and not just a top down mandate.  As such working say in a school, change that can come from the pupils and be owned by them will lead to a much more effective change in the culture. 

We started the session with a brief introduction to the philosophy of AI and then did an exercise called ‘sparkling moment’.  This involves asking people to pair up, and one asks the other for a recent ‘sparkling moment’ at work (or elsewhere if the person is not working).  The listener writes down key words or phrases that strike them, gently encouraging them by asking, ‘and what else?’ They do this for 3 minutes.  The roles are then reversed.  Then there is quiet time of one minute whilst both parties think of two qualities or strengths that they have picked up from their partner from listening to their ‘sparkling moment’.  At the end both partners share with each other the two strengths or qualities they saw from listening to the sparkling moment. For example a quality of caring, or wanting to see others happy were both picked up from their partner’s stories in this group.  This simple exercise puts people in touch with something positive (often important in stressful work situations), it enables them to be heard without interruption, and enables their partners to use their intuitions about their qualities which are fed back to the whole group, thus building group cohesion.

A very interesting thing happened at the beginning of this session.  Two young children who were being baby sat, came into the room where we were working.  I was on the point of being irritated, seeing this as an interruption, and then thought, “What if I see this situation appreciatively and just welcome them?”  My whole mental attitude changed. I relaxed and was able to include them, and I was able to model what I was teaching.  Once the children saw what the group and their mother was doing, they returned to the babysitter without any prompting.   In other words we got to the outcome I would have wanted but not in a conflictual way.

I cannot say what impact the session had, as the group was already had begin to build cohesion in the very short time we had been together.  But I do believe that people genuinely like appreciating and being appreciated if it is genuine and not a form of manipulation.  The exercise was obviously only a taster, and if you want to know more, just Google Appreciative Inquiry.  Thank you, Jock, for creating the space for Joan and I to introduce this topic.

Robin Shohet  (Findhorn, Scotland) June 2011.